


i’d still be loving you

by aryasbadbenergy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mentions of choking, Not A Happy Ending, and ned dayne is peeta ofc, basically arya is katniss and gendry is gale, inspired by the hunger games: mockingjay, not the sexy kind, sansa is the equivalent of prim so if youre gonna complain just dont even click on this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24241498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryasbadbenergy/pseuds/aryasbadbenergy
Summary: gendry swears he is going to kill ned dayne. no amount of pleading will convince him that ned’s fingers wrapping around arya’s throat was out of his control.named for “loving you” by seafret
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	i’d still be loving you

**Author's Note:**

> this is just for fun because i really love the hunger games by suzanne collins and can’t stop seeing the similarities between gale and gendry so this was born ! i am team peeta and i love ned dayne and want the best for him so this impulse was interesting aha hope you guys like it !

**Everywhere I go, all I ever see**   
**Are all the little ways that used to be**   
**People that I know only ever speak**   
**Like everything is headin' for catastrophe**   
**There's nothing I could do, I don't get to choose**   
**Even if I could rewrite the history**   
**It's clear to see**   
**That I'd still be**

**Loving you**

**Loving You ~ Seafret**

Gendry swears he is going to kill Ned Dayne. 

He didn’t see the way Ned’s fingers had encased Arya’s throat, since Sansa was busy picking bits of shrapnel out of his back from rescuing Ned. And when Ned arrived home the first thing he tried to do, was kill Arya. 

But Gendry does see the bruises on her throat the next night when he goes to see her. She isn’t quite awake yet, but her eyes keep drifting open. Gendry sits down on the edge of her bed, slowly, so he doesn’t agitate her neck. He reaches forward, gently pushing her hair aside so he can see the awful proof of Ned’s return. She flinches when he brushes his fingers along her neck. Then she finally focuses on Gendry, and she’s awake.

Arya had always been small, but the past few weeks had made her almost as frail as he remembers her being the day they met. She had her fingers all over his rabbit snare. He hadn’t meant to frighten her, but he didn’t want her stealing his fresh rabbit when he had his sisters and brother to feed after his father died.

Arya had flinched then too, just as she did when she thought maybe it was Ned who had come back to finish the job. It makes him angry.

Sansa told him that Ned hadn’t been in control. She said the Capitol did something to all of his memories of Arya, making him believe that if he didn’t kill her, she would kill him. 

And he’s even angrier when he realizes that he _can’t_ be angry. 

But still, the dark purple marks on Arya’s skin make him clench a fist at his side, refusing to acknowledge that Ned can’t be blamed a little. 

The Capitol stole Ned from Arya and returned him broken. A husk of the boy he used to be. 

And Gendry feels sick with the most selfish thought he’s had since his father died in the mines. Arya will never love him if Ned stays in Thirteen like this, thick leather bands restraining him, his friends unable to see him, and left alone with the terrible and twisted thoughts of Arya the Capitol poisoned him with. Gendry swears that he will kill any person that had something to do with the state of Ned. But he will leave Cersei. Cersei is Arya’s kill. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you from him,” he finally whispers. Arya wets her lips with her tongue and opens her mouth. “Sansa says you’re not allowed to speak. It could hurt you more,” he says. He only wanted to apologize to Arya. He didn’t want her to try to deny that he had failed her. That he hadn’t made Beric wait until they knew how Ned would react after the sedative wore off before bringing Arya in to reunite them. 

He stands up, presses a kiss to Arya’s forehead, and leaves without saying anything else. 

* * *

He meets Arya in Two a few weeks later, and without a word, he sits down to help her pluck feathers from the gooslings she had shot. 

They’re almost done when he finally speaks. “I saw Ned that night I went to see you and again before I left.”

“Beric told me he’s improving. What do you think?”

“Something selfish.”

“Selfish? Was it that you have no one to be jealous of anymore?” She tosses the plucked goosling into her pile, with a little more aggression than she needs. 

Gendry shakes his head. “I realized that I could never compete with him.” Arya clenches her jaw. “No matter what, if he doesn’t get better, you can never be with me. It will always feel wrong.”

“It felt wrong to kiss Ned, too, because of you,” she whispers it so quietly, yet Gendry is still startled. He drops the goosling and stares at Arya for a moment. She refuses to look up at him, intently staring at each feather she plucks. 

“If I thought that were true, I could almost live with my own guilt.”

Arya looks up at him. “It is true.” Gendry almost smiles at her. “But I think what you said about Ned is too.”

Gendry groans and finishes plucking the rest of his bird. 

“I don’t know what you want,” he mutters, and picks up his pile of plucked gooslings. Arya picks her pile up too, and leads him to the camp kitchen. They drop the birds off, and Gendry gets sent back out to collect more kindling for the fire. Arya volunteers to go with him, and for a moment, Gendry wishes she wouldn’t have. 

“I want you,” she says when they‘re about to leave the forest with their arms full of the desired kindling. 

Gendry turns around to look at her. He drops his kindling to the ground and kisses her before she changes her mind. She lets her kindling fall as well, and Gendry cups her face with his hands. She grabs onto his elbows and kisses him back, and it’s all that Gendry has wanted, all this time, for Arya to want _him_ , but it’s not right. She seems too distant, but all too eager to let Gendry hold her up against the rough bark of a tree trunk. 

He doesn’t want her to just let him kiss her. He wants her to want to kiss him, too. He pulls away, and Arya tries to chase his lips, but Gendry sets her back down. It’s not right. 

“What are you thinking, Arry?” He uses her old nickname, the name she had first told him when they met in the woods out of fear of him telling the Peacekeepers on her (like he wasn’t poaching rabbits himself) but he hadn’t called her Arry in far too long. He thinks that it might have even been before the Quell. 

She stares at him for a moment and brings her fingertips up to run along his cheek. “I’m not sure,” she admits. 

“Then it’s like kissing someone who’s drunk. You don’t really mean it,” he says and pushes her hand back down to her side. Arya stares at her hand for a moment. 

“You kiss many drunk people, then?” It’s an effort to tease, maybe to go back to normal, but Gendry doesn’t want them to go back to normal. He wants them to go back to that day in the woods and for her to know that she loved him, then. Not ask him to leave with her and Ned and then _maybe_ she could love him once they were away from the watchful eyes of the Capitol. 

Sometimes he wishes that someone would’ve volunteered in Ned’s place in the first games.

Maybe that someone should have been him. 

“No, but I can imagine it,” he says, forcing himself out of the past. There’s no point to it now. They can never go back. 

“Am I the only girl you’ve kissed, then?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then who have you kissed?”

“Too many to remember,” he spits, holding onto hope that he could make her hurt just as she had made him. (Even though he knew he never wanted to hurt her.) It was easy after the first games for her to convince him that the kisses with Ned were only to make it home. All of it, always, was just to make it home. Until she cried and kissed him in that horrible arena the second time around, believing that he had died.

“Where?”

“Everywhere. You name it.” Arya rolls her eyes, and it’s meant to be playful, but Gendry can’t stand that she _knows_ he is lying, because all he’s done since he’s been seventeen was think about how the only girl he really wanted to kiss was her. He was able to move past it once, with Jeyne Heddle, but she had insisted that kissing someone who was in love with someone else was just like kissing someone who was drunk.

He wishes he would’ve been able to compare kissing Arya to something else then because he can’t bear the thought of Arya loving Ned. 

“Then when did you decide you wanted to kiss me, instead of the other girls? When you saw me with Ned?”

“No.” She stares at him, waiting for a real answer. “Do you remember the winter before the games? Anguy was teasing you about trading a kiss for a rabbit?” Arya nods. “Miss Ravella told him to stop being crass and you said you didn’t mind, but I… minded.” He feels stupid, like he was only seventeen again and Arya didn’t quite get any of his advances and then he watched Ned Dayne beat him to it. 

Ned Dayne saying he had a crush on her for forever in his interview. 

Ned Dayne saying he burned the bread on purpose and took hits from his mother to give it to Arya in the first games. 

Ned Dayne announcing that he and Arya had married in secret and Arya was pregnant on live television. Even Gendry hadn’t been sure if that was a lie.

Ned Dayne dying in front of her in the arena and Theon Greyjoy saving his life while Arya sobbed. 

“Anguy was just joking.” She finally says. 

“If he wasn’t, you would’ve been the last to know,” he says and picks up the stack of kindling he had cast aside when he kissed Arya. He doesn’t want to be by Arya any longer if all he can think about is Ned, Ned, _Ned_. 

Ned Dayne wrapping his strong hands around Arya’s throat and squeezing. 

Still, she’ll choose Ned over him. And he knows that’s how it will always end. 

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah, ouch ! let me know what you think please !


End file.
